Kurt Cobain – April Fools

{This is the 2nd entry following Irish Brian’s Cheap Trick’s article from this month’s April Fools series. SMS Editor, Andy Whorehall, steps in to focus briefly on Kurt Cobain’s alternate impact on pop culture, music, and the mass marketing of pharmaceuticals. This continues this month’s short-list series on rock n’ roll’s most tragic or overrated fools. }

The end-note swan song (All Apologies) closing In Utero can’t cover enough grounds for forgiveness on Kurt Cobain’s behalf. He may have known the magnitude with what which he had created in Nirvana’s music; its impact on an entire generation of depressed, teenage suburbanites polluted his mental psyche & eventually took over his soul. The depths of depression where apathy exists combined with an outsider’s lifestyle took over the radio, TV and fashion too. Within a few years of Cobain’s suicide, depression was so popular with suburban kids that pharmaceutical companies latched onto its marketing potential. For the most part, it’s been a marketing success aimed at an entire generation facing anxiety disorders and sadness. Never has a generation had to fight for so little to feel so much pain and agony. Our grandparents are rolling in their graves as a generation of kids raised on Cobain, Alice n’ Chains, and Pearl Jam are now adults high on THC and Lorazepam raising their own kids. A vicious cycle this life thing becomes; and Cobain copped out.

Cobain may have been a gifted, young songwriter with unlimited potential but he selfishly left behind a child with a crazy woman who was just as unstable as he was at the time. His career was at a commercial peak and God only knows the artistic peaks, depths and unknowns he may have achieved had he stuck around. Besides the what ifs and could have beens, we do know the impact Nirvana made with or without the suicide footnote on their brief discography. Can we say that Nickelback would exist anyway? Bush? That really depressed guy from Staind- would he still be depressed? Would we even care about mentioning Puddle of Mudd, Seether, 3 Doors Down, Creed, Silverchair and (forgive me) The White Stripes in the same sentence? Would Taylor Hawkins still have met Dave Grohl with that sexy hair cut and 5’o clock shadow of his? Would HOLE still have had a hit record? Who cares? Nirvana’s impact loomed large on people needing more depression in their lives after 1994; and Cobain copped out.

What Nirvana influenced in a short amount of time made fools out of everyone within an earshot. Safe to say, enough time has passed to rule judgment down onto music’s minions. Nirvana was pretty f*cking good but what they unwillingly helped create stinks. It’s lingered longer than most ex-major label reps could have dreamt of. Cobain knew this early on; he knew he had created a landfill large enough to dump 20 plus years of musical garbage into. Depression never sounded so populist or lucrative before Nirvana; for once I felt like those plaid shirts mom & dad bought me in the 80s to celebrate my Replacements fixation were ok- and they still are. Depression existed in his idols’ music but not like this, not this influential or marketable. Everyone wanted a piece of his sadness as a little investment (Michael Stipe told the world he was going to make music with Ol’ K.F.Cobain); and (un)rightfully so, Cobain copped out.

Bob Dylan once said about people (fans) and the emotional core he drew inspiration from that helped create his mid-career masterpiece, Blood on The Tracks; A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying that type of pain, you know? Everyone enjoying ‘that type of pain’ is what Kurt Cobain couldn’t make sense of; and then there’s that last thing he did- Cobain copped out.